In article <3f7dsp$qbc at news.iastate.edu>, senicol at iastate.edu (Stephen E
Nicol) wrote:
> I have been having a difficult time trying to transfer executable
programs from a UNIX system to my Mac. Even though I designate the
transfer (Kermit or Zmodem) and designate my protocol as binary, my Mac
still receives the programs as a documen. Any advise on how to fix this
problem would be greatly appreciated.
>>senicol at iastate.edu
Executables are not cross-platform compatible. In other words, if you have
an executable for the UNIX machine, you can't just move it to your Mac and
expect it to work. There are *major* differences between platforms. The
Mac will treat almost everything that does not conform to it's idea of an
application (ie, resource fork with code resource 0, etc) as a document,
so really, you can't fix the problem using a simple transfer. Besides,
even if you could get the mac to pretend it was an application, the binary
code in the file would be for a different type of processor, so it
certainly wouldn't do what you wanted.
If you really need to do such a transfer, you need to obtain the source
code to the executable, and a compiler for the Mac, and create a Macintosh
application. This is sometimes easy, but more often than not, a real
headache. A better option is to find out if there is already a Macintosh
port of the program. Failing that, you'll just have to use it on the unix
machine if you're not willing to do the port yourself.
Sorry that there isn't much good news here.
Regards,
James.
--
James Gardner
Garvan Institute of Medical Research
EMAIL: j.gardner at garvan.unsw.edu.au